Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 09:00:00 AM EST

President

Arizona: A new NBC News-Marist poll in Arizona finds Mitt Romney leading the GOP primary with 43% of likely voters, followed by Rick Santorum at 27%, Newt Gingrich at 16% and Ron Paul at 11%.

CNN Debate: In what may have been the last debate of the Republican nomination race, Mitt Romney challenged Rick Santorum's credentials as a fiscal conservative in a combative debate last night. Romney sought to dismantle Santorum's claim to be the authentic conservative in the race. At times, Romney received help from Ron Paul, who also largely targeted Santorum's record as a fiscal conservative. The consensus afterwards seemed to be that Santorum did not put in the performance needed headed into a critical last weekend of campaigning before Arizona and Michigan vote Tuesday.

Michigan: A new WXYZ/Detroit Free Press poll in Michigan finds Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in the by three points, 37% to 34%, followed by Ron Paul at 10% and Newt Gingrich at 7%. Another 12% are either undecided or refused to answer. The poll finds that among Republican voters, Santorum leads Romney by 41%. Among Independent voters, Romney leads Santorum by 30%.

Oklahoma: A new Rasmussen survey in Oklahoma finds Rick Santorum with a big lead over Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential race with 43%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 22%, Mitt Romney at 18%, and Ron Paul at 7%. The Oklahoma primary is on March 6.

Romney: Mitt Romney unveiled a plan to cut all six income tax brackets by 20%. Romney's earlier economic plan called for preserving the current top tax rate of 35 percent, while holding out the promise of lower rates later in an overhaul of the tax code. But facing a major challenge from Rick Santorum, the campaign unveiled the new plan in the hopes it would give him a boost among conservatives.

Santorum: The Red, White and Blue Fund Super PAC supporting Rick Santorum has bought an additional $600,000 television ad buy in Michigan. The group said the ad would be a contrast with Mitt Romney. The group spent $663,500 in the state last week. Mitt Romney and allied Super PAC's are heavily outspending their rivals in the state.

Senate

Maine: Andrew Ian Dodge, a former Tea Party organizer who was running in the Republican primary against Sen. Olympia Snowe, will now run as an independent. Snowe still faces businessman Scott D'Amboise in the Republican primary.

Michigan: A NBC News/Marist poll has Sen. Debbie Stabenow leading Pete Hoekstra by 53 percent to 32 percent among registered voters. Fifteen percent of Michigan voters said they were undecided. Hoekstra's disadvantage could reflect some fallout related to an ad run by his campaign in Michigan on Super Bowl Sunday. Hoekstra's campaign has now scrubbed the ad from its YouTube page and has taken down a related website.

Virginia: A Rasmussen poll of the Virginia Senate race has Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican George Allen both at 46% support. Three percent prefers some other candidate, and five percent are undecided. Polling so far of this race has shown it even, with no candidate at more than a couple point lead in any survey.

CA-21: Former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante says he is considering a run for the newly created 21st Congressional District. The former Fresno area state legislator rose during the 1990's to be Assembly speaker, was elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and served two terms, and then lost his run for governor in 2003. Democrats lost their star recruit here when state Sen. Michael Rubio dropped out of the race.

CA-30: Sen. Barbara Boxer has endorsed Rep. Howard Berman in his member versus member matchup with Rep. Brad Sherman. Boxer said she was angered by a Sherman mailer that tried to tie Berman to a San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010. Boxer joins Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gov. Jerry Brown and 23 House Democrats from California backing Berman. Sherman has only two endorsements from his fellow delegation members, Reps. Judy Chu and Grace Napolitano.

NC-9: Former state Sen. Robert Pittenger will become the 10th Republican to announce for the seat of retiring Rep. Sue Myrick. If nobody gets 40 percent in the May primary, the race will go to a runoff in July. Jennifer Roberts is the only Democrat in the race.

PA-12: The campaign of Rep. Mark Critz is claiming that Rep. Jason Altmire does not have enough valid signatures on his nominating petition to qualify for Congress. Critz says of the 1,651 signatures submitted, enough were invalid that Altmire did not meet the necessary 1,000 signatures to qualify to appear on the ballot. The Critz campaign filed its complaint in court Tuesday, but a hearing has not been set.

Governor

Florida: 2010 Democratic nominee Alex Sink sounds like she's thinking about a rematch with Gov. Rick Scott. Sink is back on the speaking circuit and has launched a nonprofit think tank, the Florida Next Foundation, to promote a Democratic agenda on issues affecting families and small businesses. Some Democrats want a new face and think the party should look elsewhere, but their lack of a statewide bench leaves them with limited options.

Washington: A new PPP poll of the Washington governors race finds Democrat Jay Inslee and Republican Rob McKenna tied with 42% each, with 16% of voters undecided. This poll differs from two polls out in the last few weeks from SurveyUSA and Elway that had McKenna with a 9 and 10% point lead.

Wisconsin: Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette is moving towards a run for a governor against Gov. Scott Walker should a recall campaign succeed. He will file the papers this week, he said, but has has not completely made up his mind.

Other

National Journal Vote Ratings: Sen. Tom Coburn from Oklahoma rates the most conservate, and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley most liberal, according to the 2011 National Journal Congressional Vote Ratings. National Journal will release full House and Senate ratings for all members this week.

Several of which he listed. Senior Population is booming, Immigration is bringing in more and more children, Jobs are changing hiring Practices. I also hate to use a common line that has been beaten to death, but the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

But I would agree with you 100% that the tax code needs to be changed. I doubt we would agree on HOW to do it though.

A Free Press analysis of IRS data shows that, in 1996, people with incomes of less than $30,000 made up 99.5% of all the nontaxable returns. In 2009, that group made up 76% of those returns. On the other hand, people making more than $30,000 went from less than 1% of nontaxable returns in 1996 to 17% in 2009.

With the child credit, people with large families can be middle class and pay little or no income tax. It's one of those Bush things to "promote families." As the chart shows, the percentage of people paying nothing rose dramatically from 34% to 42% even though the economy was booming in 2006. The middle class benefitted enormously from the Bush tax cuts, despite Democratic rhetoric that the Bush tax cuts were for the rich.

A lot of people think they pay Federal income tax because it's taken out of their paycheck every two weeks. Many don't realize they get all that money back in a refund when they file.

An upper income earner in the 35% tax bracket will return 35% of his Social Security check back to the Federal Gov in the forms of taxes. So upper income retirees only keep a portion of the SS benefits that are paid to them. The govt claw's back a good chunk in the form of taxes.

just not in lieu of income tax, so people like me that don't pay federal income tax can pay a federal tax. A national sales tax with lowered income tax rates I think can help, by broadening the tax base.

We already give the poor all their Federal income tax back. Why not give them their sales tax back too? All you have to do is make a determination how much the poor would pay in sales tax and give that back to them based on their income tax returns.

Sales taxes are great for a few reasons:

1. You can't cheat on it or hide it. The money comes in.

2. In most states necessities are tax exempt. If you want to enjoy more than the basics you have to pay for it. Those that spend more would be taxed more. If times are tough and you cut back, you pay less.

3. It hits people who aren't paying taxes, but should. I had two years recently where my income was under $20,000. I was never poor, however. Income tax treated me as if I was. Yet I wasn't spending at that level. I was spending as if I made more. If I'm going to do that, I shouldn't be treated like a real poor person.

There are two sides to the fiscal system: taxation and transfer payments.

The taxation part should be kept as simple, transparent and efficient as possible - and that means favoring a sales tax for the reasons you expose. Much less distortionary than other taxes.

This has nothing to do with ideology and it doesn't imply the overall situation of the poor would change at all - they would just be directly subsidized via the other side of the fiscal system to keep the status quo if that was the choice. In fact, their situation could easily improve because the entire fiscal system would be much more efficient, cheaper and produce more incentives to wealth and job creation.

...which I'm not going to touch until there's a dedicated diary on the subject, but there are important political reason as to why I favor the income tax, and will never support a federal sales tax or VAT. I don't care what the economic arguments are.

Allow me to note though that the principle if valid regardless of the existence of consumption taxes. It should be applied in the scenario of an income tax as well (or any other) - for example, a flat rate would be much more efficient and it wouldn't affect the progressiveness of the system. But at some point the left became convinced that a progressive fiscal system implies progressive taxation - it's a silly and illogical belief (although intuitive, I guess) but widely popular.

Better yet, it looks like they actually started from scratch instead of basing it off either one of those two judges plans.

(I'm mostly referring to St Louis area along with the counties south as there are only so many ones to draw compact districts that minimize county splits)

In particular, St Charles county is two slightly overpopulated districts instead of the judges bringing a 3rd district in bring in 10K surplus population.

Outermost St Louis county district continues to be shared with Washington county.
This keeps the northern most Jefferson county district intact and basically keeps areas south of there fairly close to current map instead of the judges major redraw.

Of course new 24 looks like the Democrats could take it in 2014. Currently old 24 is the most likely Republican held seat to flip.

The state senate delaying approval of moving the filing deadlines would not stop the commission. It is note worthy that since this is an actual commission and not the judges panel, that the normal 30 day comment period does apply; and changes are possible. (But of course anything more than minor tweaks unlikely)

for Romney to give him anything, other than maybe the chairmanship of a deficit reduction task force. Rand? maybe a cabinet post, but I don't think Veep is in the cards; he's both too green and too controversial.

I think a "Paul comission" might be a good straw man for Romney. RP could propose a gigantic number of cuts and Romney could "compromise" and only push through a few of them. It would be a good way to make a cuts package seem more moderate to Dems and Indie voters.

The news Tuesday that former Giants star Harry Carson does not intend to run for election prompted the Pascrell campaign to renew its call for U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9) to reject his Democrat on Democrat fight and gird for a general election battle against U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-5).

I like him better than Rothman (more a function of personality than difference in voting record). But does he really think people are that stupid when he repeats the nonsense that Rothman is moving into "his" district? It's mostly Rothman's old district. And a non-politician declining to run in the new 5th isn't exactly a great opportunity to harp on about Rothman's move.

Whatever....I am glad that the fight is on the Dem side. But I still think that Garrett is in for quite a fight even against the no-names exploring a run. He can't get better than 20%-25% in Hackensack and Teaneck. He is looking at potentially a 12K vote deficit to make up in the added territory.

Of course he's going to exploit them. He's a politician. He's framing the issue the same way Obama frames his issues and Republicans frame theirs. He's got the FACT that where Rothman currently lives is in the 5th, and he must move if he wants to live in the 9th. That's a powerful and simple argument to have on your side. If you have to start arguing "But a higher percentage of voters from the old this are in the new that and the this is a lower number of that..." Snooze! You've lost 99% of the people. It's not that people are stupid; they just don't have the time to spend on these things that we choose to. Pascrell has a nice, tidy, simple argument, and the more he hammers it, the better chance that he overcomes Rothman's advantages.

They've been fairly harsh on Romney. They gave Santorum a 4 point lead in Michigan, the highest of 6 polls. They gave Santorum an 18 point lead in Ohio, also the highest. They and PPP, also harsh on Romney in almost every poll, had Arizona in single digits.

I don't like them much, due to methodology and transparency, but I wouldn't dismiss them either. I just wouldn't hold them up as the best poll and ignore all others.

Specter says he was outright lying about his judge explanation. Sounded like a contrived answer to me, he had to make something up. Anyhow, Santorum's not going to win Michigan now. And with no more debates he may be finished.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

because he was an incumbent Republican Senator. That goes without saying. Santorum endorsed him because Santorum thought it was good for Santorum at the time. Nothing wrong with that. Anyhow, Santorum's had a very bad day yesterday.

Sen. Specter has President Bush's full support. The president stated recently in Pittsburgh, "I'm proud of his leadership for the state of Pennsylvania. I look forward to working with him as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to make sure my judges get through and get appointed.

It was such a softball question that I expected Santorum to hit it out of the park. All he had to say was "Mitt didnt you vote for Paul Tsongas for President in the Democrat primary in 1992? At least Specter was a Republican at the time. But I did endorse Specter in 2004 and Sen Specter did let me down and he let America down when he sold out the principles he claimed to believe in in a desperate attempt to cling to power. But his betrayl taught me an important lesson. You have to be warry of supporting politicians without a core belief, who will say anything to anyone to get elected. Which is why I couldnt endorse you the way I did in 2008 because I learned my lesson and I know too much is at stake to make that mistake again. We can risk voting for a Republican who will betray our principles when the liberal Democrats make him a better offer."

In the most ironic (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/03/us/a-republican-congressman-discloses-he-is-a-homosexual.html) endorsement ever (the timing makes it even better), former US Rep Jim Kolbe endorsed Paul Babeu today.

From IL-09, familial roots in MI-14, college in PA-02/07, and working for the summer in DC-AL.

Obama doesn't have to bother with states accounting for 260 electoral votes. He only needs to run ads and campaign in 3 or 4 states to get to 270. If he can get Ohio, NOrth Carolina, or Florida in his solid column, he doesn't even have to do that.

Earlier in the week, I saw a survey (maybe the NBC/WSJ poll?) that had Romney and Santorum tied among Arizona Republicans who have yet to vote, but with Romney up a healthy 30 percent among early voters. If Santorum's momentum has truly stalled, which I'm almost positive of, this could prove disastrous for him. Think Romney-Gingrich Florida numbers.

He has no real mind for strategy, and purity of ideals is nothing if you stand in the corner, shouting at people who don't hear. You're standing in the corner, out of conversations of power, because people cringe at your tone, which drowns out your words. I myself can be guilty of this, but never when an election is on the line.

Rick McClure, president of the Ontario Montclair Teachers Association, said most of what the governor proposed is unnecessary, as it relates to state teacher's retirement system.

"The problem is mostly related to the decline in investment returns in the last few years, but those returns are coming back and pension plans are designed to function over a long period of time," McClure said. "No one should make a decision on a pension plan based on one or two years of investment performance ... Our system does not require those kinds of solutions."

Yes, in German opinion polls, there are usually
no undecided voters. However, I am not sure if this is because respondents who choose not to be shot, or whether the survey respondents simply ignore such institutions and exclude.

I know in Canada, all polls only mention the percentage among the decided voters. It's crucial because that is how you can really see how close one is to a majority. Not so. Important here, but it would be great if polls excluded the undecideds in the toplines.

It's not commonly used anywhere, so it's not like you're going to hear a random Yiddish conversation. My grandparents were the last two Yiddish speakers in my family. The language has a strong cultural tradition, especially in theatre, but the people keeping it alive aren't speaking it regularly. Strangely, my first two "Hebrew names" are actually the same word in Hebrew and Yiddish.

You don't live in Brooklyn. There are at least one million people that speak it fluently. Almost all of them ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Bnei Brak, Bet Shemesh, Montreal, London, Manchester, Antwerp (where non-orthodox also speak it) and some other places.